The first official pictures of AMD’s upcoming Radeon RX Vega graphics cards have leaked out. The pictures show the reference model and limited edition model which will utilize the reference PCB design and feature blower style air coolers to dissipate heat from the cards.

This and the coming week are going to be really interesting for graphics enthusiasts. AMD is finally going to launch a new high-end graphics card using their latest and flagship GPU. AMD Vega will be replacing Fiji as the fastest Radeon chip after more than two years. If you weren’t keeping up with recent news, it should be pointed out that AMD’s Radeon RX Vega lineup will feature two cards, the Radeon RX Vega 64 and the Radeon RX Vega 56.

The branding scheme and the respective number references to the market segment and amount of NCUs featured on the graphics product. The Radeon RX Vega 64 will have 4096 cores while the Radeon RX 56 will have 3584 cores. Both models will be available in a range of different SKUs that include reference air, limited air and a liquid edition model. Pictures of the flagship RX Vega 64 are out now by Videocardz.

AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Reference Edition

The first model we are looking at is the Radeon RX Vega 64 reference edition. This variant features the reference PCB design which would be very similar to the Radeon Vega Frontier edition and has a blower style cooler to cool the card. The design is highly reminiscent of the Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 series reference cards with a smooth textured front and plastic shroud design. The Radeon RX Vega 64 will be powered by dual 8 pin connectors and takes two slots worth of space. Display outputs include a single HDMI and triple DisplayPort connectors.

AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Limited Edition

The Radeon RX Vega 64 Limited edition is very similar to the Radeon RX Vega 64 reference edition in terms of PCB design and clock speeds. The only difference is the more elegant cooler design that makes use of premium material for the shroud which looks great. There’s the Vega logo on the top and a Radeon “R” square in the corner which emits LED light, similar to the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition. This model will cost slightly more than the reference edition and since it’s a limited edition, it won’t be available for the entire lifespan of the Vega lineup.

AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Edition

The third model is the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid edition which as the name suggest would feature liquid cooling. But there are no pictures of the card as of yet. We can expect it to look very similar to the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition Liquid model which has already been launched and will come with higher / stable clock speeds compared to the air cooled variants and better cooling potential. We can also expect a premium price point for the liquid cooled model

The graphics chip will be utilizing the latest 14nm GFX9 core architecture which is based on the NCU (Next Compute Engine) design. The graphics card will feature 64 Compute Units or 4096 stream processors. AMD plans on increasing the throughput of the chip through increased clock speeds. This will allow AMD to pump numbers better than the Fiji GPU which is based on the 28nm GCN 3.0 architecture and comes with the same number of cores, 4096 SPs.

We can expect the clock speeds to be beyond 1600 MHz to deliver increased gaming and graphics performance compared to the Frontier Edition. There’s also 8 GB of HBM2 VRAM which comes in two stacks (4 GB per stack). The graphics card has a total rated bandwidth of 480 GB/s which is lower than 512 GB/s on Fiji. It also features a pixel fill rate of 90 GPixels/s.

Overall, the Radeon RX Vega family sounds nice but AMD has taken too long to produce a viable (yet to be seen) competitor to NVIDIA’s Pascal lineup. In a few days, we will know for sure if what AMD did with Vega can deliver some great benefits to consumers and gamers or not.